These days, the German composer Friedrich von Flotow (1812-83) is remembered for a single work, the opera Martha. Having featured Flotow's greatest success as long ago as 1956, the Wexford Festival Opera chose to open its 50th-anniversary season on Thursday with Alessandro Stradella (1844), a work that won an international acclaim that led to the commissioning of Martha.
Flotow's romanticised treatment of the life of the 17th-century Italian composer, who was murdered in 1682, is rather thin. It boasts a soprano display aria for Stradella's beloved, Leonore; an aria for Stradella that has commended itself to many a tenor; and a captivating unaccompanied trio for the three villains who are won away from murder by the power of song.
Much of the music's charm is rather faded, even threadbare, and the Wexford production team of Thomas de Mallet Burgess (director) and Julian McGowan (designer) seemed to have decided that Flotow and his work were not to be trusted.
Visually, the evening was lively, with a wonderfully bizarre streak of imagination applied to the masks of the carnival revellers who connive in the elopement of Stradella and Leonore.
But, visual appeal aside, the director seemed most concerned to lay on a series of gags - from a ladder rising through the bottom of a gondola to villains disguised as a statue and a sheep, to a four-seater bike anchored to the floor - that often smothered the composer's flickering invention.
Stefano Costa, as Stradella, mostly sounded as if he wished he were singing something heroic rather than the lyrical lines that Flotow favoured. The chorus's gentle contribution to the opening serenade was more effective than that of the man who was supposed to be leading the serenading.
Ekaterina Morozova rose thrillingly to the coloratura demands of Leonore's So War' Es Denn Erreicht, but it was the buffo characters - Frantisek Zahradnicek and Declan Kelly as the would-be assassins, Malvolio and Barbarino, and Andrei Antonov as their paymaster, Bassi, seeking to regain Leonore from Stradella - who made the most vivid impression.
Under Daniel Callegari, the playing of the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Belarus was mostly stylish, but sometimes a little too stiff to follow the singers' flexing lines.
Wexford Festival Opera runs until November 4th. Bookings at 053-22144, or e-mail boxoffice@wexfordopera.com
